Monday, January 28, 2013

Kick off the Lunar New Year with a "Year of the Snake" art show at GR2! This has been a running tradition for the past 5 or 6 years, I'm excited to be a part of it this year. I won't make it to the opening, but I'll be there in spirit.

Serpent: back detail
This piece will be on view at the Year Of The Snake show at GR2. It's carved from a carpenter's pencil, the carving is mostly done on the pencil's wood. The snake's black coloring comes from rubbing shaved graphite onto the wood. I like how shiny and black the snake is. The only tool I used on this carving was an X-acto knife with a number 11 blade.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

I'm in love with Cortez!
This is a recently finished commission for Kevin as a gift to his sweetheart Kate. Cortez is their kitty who likes to hunt earthworms and has a hook tail. Thank you so much for finding my work guys! I hope you enjoy little Cortez. :)

360 view of Cortez
This was another experiment at combining different colors. I really love how the stripes came out. Adding color like this is tricky, you can't directly melt the wax onto the crayon. The wax that is on top will just pop off after it's cooled. To get this coloring done I have to carve a deep channel where I want the new color to be, then pour in the melted wax. Think if it as inlay work. So each of Cortez's dark grey stripes are made of deep cuts in the light grey crayon with melted dark grey wax poured into them. The excess wax is carved off, then the body is shaped. It's a much longer process, but the effects are well worth it.
His white snout is also made from carving a deep oval shaped hole, then white wax is poured in. After the white snout is cooled the nose and mouth features are carved into the white wax and the dark grey wax poured in. I hope that makes sense? :P

Kate viewing the crayons. Photo courtesy of Kevin Turco.
Thank you guys! This was such a fun project!